The collection was transferred to the Special Collections and Preservation Division from what is now the Visual and Performing Arts Department of the Chicago Public Library. Additions to the collection are made on an ongoing basis.

Historical Note

The first professional theater production in Chicago took place at the Sauganash Hotel in October 1837, the same year that Chicago was incorporated as a city. By the latter half of the 19th century Chicago had become a popular theater town visited by many of the greatest American and European actors. Both grand auditoriums and smaller stages were built, many in the Loop. These theaters played host to not only straight plays, but also musicals, operas, vaudeville, burlesque, ballet and minstrel shows. Theater managers advertised their shows with playbills and handbills that were one-sided documents posted around town and passed out to potential theater goers. Playbills announced upcoming attractions and productions at the theater and remained a popular method of advertising throughout the mid-1800s. Toward the end of the 19th century theaters began to produce multipage programs that included additional production information such as full cast and scene lists as well as extensive third-party advertising. For an overview of early theater in Chicago, please consult Richard Christiansen’s book, A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago (Northwestern University Press, 2004).

Scope and Content

The collection consists of programs, playbills, stagebills, newspaper clippings and other material on theatrical productions in Chicago. The earliest piece is a playbill for Pizarro, which played at Rice’s Theatre in 1848. While the bulk of the collection covers the years 1880 to 1960, programs are continuously being added for historic venues in the Loop.

Arrangement

The programs are arranged alphabetically by theater then chronologically. Each program has a unique call number based on the theater’s name and production date (e.g. Academy 1875-12-30). When the exact date is unknown, the date is listed as the last day of the known month or year.

Additional Resources

More than 2,000 playbills and programs of local dramas, comedies, melodramas, operas, vaudeville performances and other events between the 1840s to the 1920s are available in the Library’s Chicago Theater Collection-Historic Programs Digital Collection. Scrapbooks in the Chicago Theater Collection complement materials held in the Chicago Theater Collection-Historic Programs and often include reviews and images of actors and scenes on stage. In addition to these scrapbooks, the E.B. Gould Collection is a disbound scrapbook that includes playbills (1879-1882). For production information from modern Off-Loop theater companies, consult the Miscellaneous Programs Collection or the Library’s theater archives. The Chicago Public Library’s Visual and Performing Arts Department on the eighth floor of the Harold Washington Library Center holds additional information on music and dance productions in Chicago.